Wednesday, February 15, 2017

End of Kremlin’s Dream of ‘Big Deal’ with Trump Makes Putin More Dangerous Not Less

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 16 –Andrey
Piontkovsky is undoubtedly correct that “’a big deal’” between Moscow and
Washington has become “impossible” given the fallout from the Flynn scandal
because “any step by Trump in this direction would mean for him political death”
(nv.ua/opinion/piontkovskiy/novaja-realnost-kremlja-647586.html).

But while the Russian commentator
doesn’t say so in his latest article, the apparent collapse of Putin’s calculations
that the new US Administration he so openly has backed would deliver just such
a deal may in fact make the Kremlin leader more dangerous in the short term for
at least two reasons.

On the one hand, as long as Putin
felt he had something to lose in Washington by being more aggressive in Ukraine
or elsewhere, he has operated in a more restrained fashion than may be the case
now. If he senses that he has nothing to lose, the Kremlin leader may go for
broke and launch an even larger invasion of Ukraine or make moves elsewhere.

And on the other, precisely because
the Flynn scandal and its growth has so disordered the Trump White House, Putin
may conclude that now is the time to strike given that he may assume that he
can act with impunity given that even if Trump isn’t going to deliver a grand
bargain, the US president won’t choose to respond to a Russian move with
anything but rhetoric.

Putin may be wrong in that
calculation, but if he is thinking in those terms – and Putin is very much more of a tactician
than a strategist and so likely it – he may act on them.And that could pose a more serious threat to
Russia’s neighbors and even to international peace and security in Europe.

As someone who very much feared the
kind of “grand bargain” Putin and some supposed “realists” in the US want
because it would betray not only America’s friends around the world but also American
principles, the author of these lines will be very pleased if no such deal is
ever possible as long as an aggressive dictator remains in power in Moscow.

But precisely because of those
feeling and not despite them, I am convinced that the world and the US foreign
policy establishment in the first instance needs to recognize that the end of
Putin’s latest fantasy almost certainly will make him more dangerous rather
than less and that the West should be thinking and acting now to counter him.